June 8 - Who loves you baby?

Scripture focus: Adam slept with Eve his wife. She conceived and had Cain. She said, "I've gotten a man, with God's help!" Then she had another baby, Abel. Abel was a herdsman and Cain a farmer. Time passed. Cain brought an offering to God from the produce of his farm. Abel also brought an offering, but from the firstborn animals of his herd, choice cuts of meat. God liked Abel and his offering, but Cain and his offering didn't get his approval. Genesis 4:1-5(a) (The Message)

God does not constantly approve of us like a doting parent in denial.

I have a teacher friend who tells me that the worst part of her job is dealing with parents who think their children are perfect. She believes that these parents may have good intentions – they believe they are protecting their children. But what's really happening is that these poor kids are learning some lousy (and unanticipated) lessons.

I had a kid tell me once that his mother didn't think he could do anything wrong – and he hated how she always defended him, charged up to the school and blasted his teachers, and even once threatened to sue his piano teacher. I asked him why he hated this. Surely he liked it that his mom never fussed at him!

"Oh, but she does. She just doesn't do it in front of others." This kid's mom was so worried about how her child's behavior reflected on her, she could not accept any acknowledgement of a mistake in public. And if he did what comes naturally to children and adults alike – make a mistake – she had to blame someone else for it. I know this well-intentioned mom believes that she's supporting her son's efforts and making sure that others don't inflict harm. But what's she done is teach her kid that she doesn't trust him to manage his own life. She's taught him that the world is out to get him, and he needs to defend himself with offensive actions. She's taught him that making mistakes is such a big deal, that we must go to all sorts of crazy lengths to make sure that we never ever admit we made a mistake. She's teaching her kid to hide. She's teaching him that she loves him conditionally.

On the other hand, God demonstrates his love for us like this – while we were still running around in fig leaves, before we ever came clean and acknowledged our sin and shame – he went out and made us some cool leather clothes to protect us.

I ask you – who loves more? The one who sees the sin and loves any way, or the one who is so sensitized to sin that they cannot acknowledge its presence? God loves us even when we act out.

Recommended reading: Hosea 11-14

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 7 - Godly intentions

Scripture focus: God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them. God said, "The Man has become like one of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should reach out and take fruit from the Tree-of-Life and eat, and live forever? Never-this cannot happen!" So God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the ground, the same dirt out of which they'd been made. He threw them out of the garden and stationed angel-cherubim and a revolving sword of fire east of it, guarding the path to the Tree-of-Life. Genesis 3:21-24 (The Message)

Previous verses give us a picture of a parent handing out consequences. Depending on your trust level, you might see this as discipline or punishment. But it's hard for even the most distrusting reader to not have their heart grow a size or two with today's scripture focus.

It is as we imagine God taking the time to make leather clothing for Adam and his wife that we see how much God loves us. Those fig leaves were completely ineffectual at managing, covering, and hiding their sin and shame. God could have left them scratching their loins, wondering if they did or did not choose a poisonous leaf, exposed in spite of their best fig leaf picking. God could have thought, "Well, a fine mess they've made of things! Serves them right to have to walk around worrying about what is and what is not showing. Let's just see how they like fig leaf apparel! Then God could have walked off in a huff, thinking, "I'll show them. They didn't love and trust me, so I'll give them a taste of their own medicine. I'll leave them to their own devices. Let them figure out how to manage their shame."

But God didn't. Instead, and even though Adam and his wife had a need for clothing as a direct result of growing forgetful of their loving relationship with God, God still provided for them in their time of need.

God protects us - most often from ourselves.

This is his driving motivation - to love and protect his children.

We can trust God with who we really are - even our secret sins and shameful thoughts.

Recommended reading: Hosea 7-10

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 6 - Shame triggers fear of consequences

Scripture focus: He told the Woman: "I'll multiply your pains in childbirth; you'll give birth to your babies in pain. You'll want to please your husband, but he'll lord it over you." He told the Man: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, 'Don't eat from this tree,' the very ground is cursed because of you; getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife; you'll be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, you'll get your food the hard way, planting and tilling and harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk, until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you'll end up dirt." The Man, known as Adam, named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. Genesis 3:16-20 (The Message)

Adam and Eve experienced serious consequences for their poor decision-making. Most of us can relate! Clearly they receive consequences for their behavior. But what is the motivation behind God's parental discipline? Is it to punish, or protect? Is it to disgrace, or discipline? The motives we ascribe to God and others will seriously affect our own sense of shame.

At a recent TrueFaced Conference, one of the presenters said something that I particularly appreciated: "If we believe and fear that disclosure of a sin will cost us as much as discovery of that sin, then we will wait to be discovered. We will wait for someone to discover it." If we believe that God (and others) are driven to punish and disgrace us, we will always hide our sin (a very unhealthy response that actually increases our sin vulnerability). When we believe that God (and others) trust and love us, even when they discipline us, we understand that this discipline is for our protection. Does this help make sense of why we tend to hide at the very time when we are in greatest need of support?

It will take a powerful motivational source to convince us to become honest, open, self-disclosing people. Fortunately, God has made just such a provision for times like these. Why do we even care whether we disclose or wait to get caught in the act of sin? More on that later.

For today, prayerfully try to wrap your brain around the idea that disclosure is a gift that will actually reduce our sinful ways; discovery increases our shame and causes those we love to doubt our willingness to change.

Recommended reading: Hosea 4-6

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 5 - Shame says, "Hide!"

Scripture focus: He said, "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid." God said, "Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?" The Man said, "The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it." God said to the Woman, "What is this that you've done?" "The serpent seduced me," she said, "and I ate." Genesis 3:11-13 (The Message)

If sin (living independently of God) inflames shame, what exactly is shame?

• Shame-filled people believe that something is uniquely broken in us that cannot be fixed.
• Shame-filled folks have the mistaken impression that because we sin something is wrong with us.
• Unresolved shame creates the need to hide and isolate, robs us of our dignity and ability to be honest with ourselves about our shame. Notice that Adam and Eve didn't go running off to tell their heavenly Father what they did wrong. Instead, they hid.
• Since the human has no capacity to cope with sin, most people choose to try to manage their sin by blaming others for their problems. It's easy to get confused and think that shame-soaked people have a problem accepting personal responsibility. But the root of the problem is a keen awareness of our own powerlessness in the face of sin. We can try to boost our attempts at accepting personal responsibility, but without dealing with the root of the issue we will run on the hamster wheel of shame unless we get to the bottom of this problem!

The good news is that shame comes with a host of symptoms, which can help us identify when we've gotten ourselves into a stewpot of shame. Some symptoms of a shame attack include:

1. High sensitivity to our own sin and therefore, high sensitivity to the sin of others.
2. In a difficult situation a shame-filled person loses objectivity and the ability to love others and instead, we go to any lengths to become the issue.
3. Unable to give and receive love.
4. Susceptible to wrong life choices.
5. Controlling of others.
6. Unable to stick with, establish long term healthy relationships because our shame will lie to us about others (expect too much/judge/hypersensitive), assume they think like we do (expect too much of them/judge them/hypersensitive), and we will either withdraw or sabotage the relationship by shaming behaviors until they have to protect themselves from our angry, shaming ways.
7. Shaming creates hiding and isolating behaviors - so that we resist joining groups, asking for feedback, putting ourselves in situations where we share ourselves in an honest and true way.

Recommended reading: Hosea 1-3

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 4 - Fig Leaf Failure

Scripture focus: Immediately the two of them did "see what's really going on"-saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God. God called to the Man: "Where are you?" Genesis 3:7-9 (The Message)

Adam and Eve got what they wanted; tasting the fruit immediately allowed them to see "what's really going on" - but it failed to provide them with God-vision goggles.
Living independently of God (abandoning their commitment to a love relationship with Him),

Adam and Even lost the ability to see themselves as God sees them - holy and dearly beloved. One bite of the fruit, and these two see themselves through a mirror best reserved for circus acts and freak shows. Their self-image became distorted. Their esteem plummeted. No longer able to remember their favored status as kids of the King, their sin inflames their shame, and their shame becomes their defining feature. (Some people think their eviction from the Garden was the point of "separation," but didn't the relationship with Adam, Eve and God really crash the minute they chose to distrust God?)

The other day I went to wash a load of clothes and in my haste slammed the washing machine top down on my poor little old thumb - an appendage that is completely ill-equipped to withstand the pressure of a fast moving washing machine lid. For the remainder of the evening, the only thing I could feel was my aching, purple thumb. My persistent cough was not an issue. Nor did I notice that my legs continued to work fine. All I could think of was my injury, and worry about whether my thumbnail would stay attached. No amount of ice, salve, or soothing words could comfort me.

Sin is like a sore thumb. The human mind, body and spirit make no provision for "handling" sin. As the authors of TrueFaced (a wonderful book I highly recommend to the reader) say far more eloquently than I ever could - sin refuses to be managed. We simply cannot handle, manage, or cope with sin.

When sin is inflamed, it triggers shame. Eve moved from trusting God to testing her limits, and ended up with a heap of shame. More on shame and its nasty effects on a person's spirit in the days ahead.

Recommended reading: Acts 25-28

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 3 - Temptation

Scripture focus: The serpent told the Woman, "You won't die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil." When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it-she'd know everything!-she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate. Genesis 3:4-6 (The Message)

So what is it that got Eve in trouble? Could it be that she was tempted by knowledge ("she'd know everything")? Maybe. Did she suffer from a case of God-envy - wanting in on all the stuff that God knew? Is knowledge power and was Eve on a mission to increase her power potential? If so, what was her desired outcome? She and Adam already were CEO's of their large and fruitful organization (God blessed them: "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth." (Genesis 1:28)) called planet earth. Each evening God showed up and strolled through the garden with them. He didn't abandon nor forsake them, leaving them to their own devices and in so doing, accidentally trigger self-esteem issues and fear of failure. In fact, up to this point in the story it appears as if Adam and Eve have the perfect life.

In summary, Eve and Adam her co-conspirator, are without excuse.

They don't have absentee or angry parents to blame for their misdeed.

They haven't experienced a world where God seems distant and unavailable.

But something triggered their self-destruct button. What was it?

And given that information, what causes us to self-destruct?

This is really, really important. Because for far too long we might have been looking under the wrong rocks to uncover the nature of our "problems" and find a "solution."

The human condition unites us. Eve is one of us. Her story can instruct ours. When Eve spoke to the principle rather than her trust relationship with God, she opened the door to making a choice independent of her love relationship with God. In that moment, she abandoned her commitment to loving and trusting God, and instead, entered into a contractual relationship determined by rules, rights and responsibilities. The moment we begin to care more about what we know or do than who we love, the second we become distrustful of another's love for us, we will move to betrayal. At the heart of this issue is Eve's betrayal of her love relationship with God. She betrayed his trust.

May God provide each of us with new and profound insights into the nature of betrayal - because betrayal is Eve's issue - not a propensity to eat the wrong kind of fruit.


Recommended reading: Acts 21-24

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community

June 2 - What God Allegedly Said

Scripture focus: The Woman said to the serpent, "Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It's only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, 'Don't eat from it; don't even touch it or you'll die.'" Genesis 3:2-3 (The Message)

As Eve responds to the serpent's question, notice several crucial points:

1. It appears that Eve added to God's message when she says "don't even touch it." If you read Genesis 2:17, it says, "You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don't eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you're dead." Is this significant? I don't know. But I have observed in myself a tendency to try to use borders and fences to coral my wayward heart. For example, dieting gurus tell us to keep junk food out of our homes in order to maintain our sincere commitment to healthy eating. That's a fence. I've heard sponsors recommend that alcoholics stop visiting their favorite "watering holes" in order to avoid temptation. Studies in brain activity indicate that if we even see a "using buddy" our brain lights up like a Roman candle in the exact same spot that it lights up when we use (therefore they conclude that it's a good idea to avoid using buddies too). I understand the excellent advice; I even follow it – most days. But avoidance isn't the cure, merely a recommended part of any good recovery program. Avoidance alone has never cured one's compulsion to use a cheap substitute to fill us with what we so desperately lack. I wonder if Eve, in a sincere attempt to follow God's instruction, put up the "don't touch" boundary as a way to protect herself from her own desires and inclinations.

2. Notice that Eve was not confused about God's instructions. She said the right thing; she knew the principle. The problem was that she proceeded to live the wrong life; knowing and saying the right things doesn't necessarily translate into making wise choices.

3. Finally, study Eve's response. In answering the serpent, she spoke about principles and guidelines, not relationship. She referenced God's instructions, but was not led by her heart. Why did she feel the need to speak to the serpent about what God did or did not say? It sounds like Eve felt the need to defend God (did she wonder if God needed defending because she doubted his love and ability to protect her?).

What would have been different about this conversation if Eve were guided by trust rather than triggers? She might have said to the serpent, "Hey, you've really got me thinking. I wonder exactly why God gave me this principle to live by. Tonight, when we're walking in the garden, I'll talk to God about this and get back to you." I'm a big fan of education. I love learning new things and I appreciate how this information can be useful in helping me make wise choices. But knowledge is not a panacea to what ails us, nor is it a substitute for a trusting love relationship. So the next important question is this: what ails us?

Recommended reading: Acts 17-20

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Copyright 2009 NorthStar Community